During the past years, the interest in using mobile and landline/wireline computing devices in day-to-day communications has increased. Desktop computers, workstations, and other wireline computers currently allow users to communicate, for example, via e-mail, video conferencing, and instant messaging (IM). Mobile devices, for example, mobile telephones, handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc., also allow the users to communicate via e-mail, video conferencing, IM, and the like. Mobile telephones have conventionally served as voice communication devices, but through technological advancements they have recently proved to be effective devices for communicating data, graphics, etc. Wireless and landline technologies continue to merge into a more unified communication system, as user demand for seamless communications across different platforms increases.
Many communication applications allow for real-time or near real-time communication that falls outside of the traditional voice communication associated with wireline and wireless telephone communications. Chat session, instant messaging, Short Message Service (SMS), video conferencing, are a few such communication vehicles. Many of these types of communications are expected to become increasingly popular, particularly in view of the proliferation of wireless devices and continual technological breakthroughs in this area.
One method for facilitating the above mentioned communication vehicles is the so-called “presence” technology Presence technology can be used to determine the location, willingness to communicate, publishing information, and other parameters relating to real-time or near real-time communications. The presence technology generally refers to applications and services that facilitate location and identification of one or more endpoints to such communication links. For example, if a first user of a wireless, handheld device intends to initiate an IM session with a second IM user, presence services may be used to present the second user's willingness to receive IM messages. Presence services are an integral part of third generation (3G) wireless networks, and are intended to be employed across a wide variety of communication devices, as well as next generation wireless communication systems.
Presence information may be created at a presence server or an associated system. Presence information may be a status indicator that conveys the ability and willingness of a potential user to communicate with other users. The presence server may provide the presence information for distribution to other users (called watchers) to convey the availability of the user for communication. Presence information is used in many communication services, such as IM, and recent implementations of voice over IP (VoIP) communications.
A user client may publish a presence state to indicate its current communication status. This published state informs others that wish to contact the user of his or her availability and willingness to communicate. One use of presence is to display an indicator icon on IM clients, for example a choice of a graphic symbol with an easy-to-convey meaning, and a list of corresponding text descriptions of each of the states. This is similar to the “on-hook” or “off-hook” state of a fixed phone. Common states regarding the user's availability are “free for chat”, “busy”, etc. Such states exist in many variations across different modern IM clients. However, the standards support a rich choice of additional presence attributes that may be used for presence information, such as user mood, location or free text status.
Different protocols can be used over communications networks which use presence technology to support different presence aspects. For example, in an Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can be used to support presence features. More specifically, the SIP Publish mechanism can be used to upload presence information to a presence server. The SIP Publish is normally performed by the “presentity”, i.e., the entity owning the data to be published, however in some cases other entities on behalf of the presentity may desire to have the data published. In another example, the Open Mobility Alliance—Presence and Availability Working Group 2.0 (OMA-PAG) allows for the creation of rules for publishers, where the presentity may set rules for who is allowed to publish what data on behalf of the presentity. However, these different systems do not address all features and communication methods that may be desirable for use in these growing networks, e.g., how to publish information based on content or how to deal with unauthorized, third party requests to publish presence data.
Accordingly, systems and methods for the improvement of publishing methods in the context of presence technology are desirable.